It is known to utilize telephone call centers (“contact centers”) to facilitate the receipt and response of telephone calls or other interactions between a customer and an agent or a customer service representative (CSR). Generally, a customer is in contact with a CSR who is responsible for answering the customer's inquiries and directing the customer to the appropriate individual, department, information source, or service as required to satisfy the customer's needs. It is well known to monitor interactions between a customer and a CSR.
Information gathered from the interactions can be used to monitor the performance of the business processes employed by a contact center to identify possible training needs or deficiencies in an overall operation of a contact center. Based on a review and analysis of a group of interactions, a monitor will make suggestions or recommendations to improve the quality of the customer's experience. However, the information gathered has been typically limited to the audio conversation between the customer and the CSR, data entered by the customer through the telephone key pad, and the screens viewed by the CSR. As such, the monitor is restricted in thoroughly evaluating the performance of the contact center's business processes, and in completely understanding the experience of the customer during the interaction. Furthermore, this data has historically been in an unstructured format that only allows for manual, human analysis versus a systematic, computer based analysis of agent performance.
In many instances, it may also be desirable to analyze the entirety of the aggregate data gleaned from a group of interactions to determine the efficiency of a contact center's business processes for particular types of interactions received at the contact center or to determine the efficiency of a contact center's business processes for particular customer segments. In addition, to obtain a more accurate analysis of a contact center's business processes, it would be useful to eliminate agent variability in an analysis of a contact center's business processes.
Thus, there is a need in customer relationship management (“CRM”) for tools useful in fully evaluating a contact center's business processes. In particular, a need exists for tools that will allow for evaluating the adequacy of a contact center's business processes for particular interaction types received at the contact center and for the particular customer segments that a contact center services.
The present invention is provided to solve the problems discussed above and other problems, and to provide advantages and aspects not previously provided. A full discussion of the features and advantages of the present invention is deferred to the following detailed description, which proceeds with reference to the accompanying drawings.